Nearly every coach, player, or teacher involved with the game of baseball understands the benefits of constant hitting and batting practice.
This batting practice often requires the use of a pitcher. However, many teams, especially little league teams, do not have enough pitchers to assign one or more pitchers to batting practice. A coach is often relegated to such duty. However, this prevents that coach from carrying out his other duties. Thus, many teams do not have the facilities to accommodate all the hitters with enough batting practice to fully satisfy their needs.
It is also noted that a batting practice pitcher is also subject to danger due to the numerous balls that will be hit back towards him. Thus, many teams have to purchase protective screens to protect the batting practice pitcher. This is an extra burden on many small teams.
Accordingly, the art has included several automatic pitching machines. However, these machines are often complex, expensive and difficult to operate, store, move and control. They are often so expensive as to be out of the reach of small teams such as little league teams.
Therefore, there is a need for an automatic pitching machine which is easy to operate, store, move and control, and can be used by any team, including a little league team or the like.